I’ve learned some important lessons from my own experiences, and I’d like to share some of them. If I can help prevent one person from doing the things I’ve done and ending up with the nightmare I am living as a result, then at least something good can come from all the horror.
One of the things I learned has to do with staying in a bad relationship. I stayed in a bad relationship for various reasons, and I see other women doing the same time and time again. I have strong feelings on this issue, and now I’m at the point where I just want to stand up when I see other women staying in bad relationships and scream at the top of my lungs: “STOP IT NOW! STAND UP AND GET OUT NOW!” Let me explain…
First, I’ll define my idea of a bad relationship. Every relationship has its ups and downs, and everyone has their idiosyncrasies that can drive their partner crazy at times. I’m not talking about that. There are certain key indicators that define a relationship that needs to end, however. First of all, if your partner hits you - get out NOW. Issues relating to domestic violence are well-publicized in America, but I know how blurry the line can become. I grew up in an abusive household as a child, and I swore that when I got out at age 17, I would never, ever let anyone hit me again. And I truly believed that.
Then I got married, and he started hitting me. Right away, the alarms went off and I seriously considered leaving. But nothing is ever just black and white, is it? There were all these nuances that somehow made it okay - at least at the time. Seeing where that situation went and how it all escalated throughout the years, I can look back now and see how wrong the situation was from the beginning, and I regret not walking away the first time he raised a hand to me. But back then, I had a lot of rationalizations to excuse his behavior and continue to stay.
- How much is too much?
- Guilt and Mind Games People on the outside looking in often seem to think that it should be a clear-cut decision, like “Oh, he hit me. I won’t tolerate that. I’m leaving now”. As any woman in an abusive relationship knows, it’s not like that at all. A lot of times, the hitter will seem “sorry” and apologetic. At that point, we want to believe that he’s sincere, that he was just having a bad day, and that it’ll never happen again. We want to believe him. In my case, he was never sorry. He has never apologized for anything. In my case, he would hit me and then deny that he ever touched me. He would say things like, “You’re crazy. I never touched you. You’re blowing things out of proportion”. It’s crazy now, but back then while it was happening, his constant denial made me question whether I was, indeed, crazy or not. I’d have a bruise which would prove to me that it did, indeed, happen, but then he’s standing there repeating over and over again how he didn’t do anything and I’m just creating a problem where there is none. It’s odd, but the fact that you’re the only one who knows that something happened makes it seem like “Well, it’s not a big deal”.He played mind games with me constantly - even when I wasn’t getting hit - just to “prove” to me and to others that I was crazy. I’ll give an example to illustrate. I had been stuck inside the apartment for three weeks one time, because he wouldn’t let me out the front door. I wanted to go out, so I begged him to let me go hang out at Borders for a couple hours. Several days later, he agreed to let me go, so I took the van and went to Borders to hang out and look at books. When I pulled into the parking lot, I parked the van in a space near the door. Later, when I left the store to go home, I walked out and couldn’t find the van. I knew where I had parked it, but it was nowhere in sight. I started to panic, thinking the car had been stolen or something. I walked around the parking lot, searching for the van. Then I saw it. It was parked clear across the lot in a far corner, quite far from the store. I was relieved to find it, and I thought to myself, “Man, I could’ve sworn I parked the van in that spot by the door. That’s really odd”.
I returned home and said nothing about the van incident. However, later that evening after dinner, my husband said to me, “Did you have trouble finding your van today?” - with an evil grin across his face. I’d been dealing with his craziness for a long time, so I didn’t need to ask or discuss it any further. I knew right then that he had gone to Borders while I was inside (most likely, he followed me there to make sure that I was going where I said I would be going). He purposely moved the van across the parking lot, then left, thinking that I would doubt my sanity and prove to myself and to others that I was just crazy. This was a little incident, but when these types of incidents happen day in and day out for a long period of time, they are effective. You do start to question whether you are perceiving reality correctly, or if you’re just crazy, as he keeps telling you you are. So then, he gets angry and hits you one day and then adamantly avers that he “never touched” you - that you’re just imagining things, and somehow that explanation starts making sense to you.
- Fear: Children/Finances Another obstacle that prevents people from leaving bad relationships is fear. First of all, it’s human nature to stay with what you know - stay in your comfort zone. Change is scary. For me and for a lot of women, those fears center on money and children, as well as fear of the abuser coming after you if you decide to leave. In my relationship, he controlled all the money. In all the years that we were together, I never saw a single cent. He went to the grocery store, he paid the bills, he kept the checkbook hidden, etc. I was cut off from touching or seeing any money, which is an effective way to keep someone hostage. How do you leave when you don’t have a penny to your name? More than that, how do you leave with children? Where will you sleep? How will you eat? Those are legitimate fears that can keep you in the bad relationship.Again, people outside looking in think, “Well there are shelters and programs to help you. Just leave and go get help from one of those places”. It doesn’t work that way, however, at least not where I live. I did leave twice to go to a battered women’s shelter. At the shelter, I was told that I could stay for 30 days, and that after 30 days, I would be forced to leave - whether I had housing or not. I told them I had no money for an apartment, and I was told to go apply for public housing assistance. So I did. However, the waiting list for the public housing assistance was 2 years long. They can expedite you when you’re homeless and living in a shelter, but even then, you’re looking at a 6-month wait, at least. So, I applied everywhere and tried to get a job, but I couldn’t earn enough or first month’s rent and security deposit in those 30 days. I was on the housing assistance waiting list, but at the end of the 30 days, I had no place to go. I was forced to leave the shelters anyway.
Things were so bad with my husband, however, that I wanted to just buy a little pup tent and go find a spot in the woods and camp out until I could save enough for an apartment. But I was told, “If you live in the woods with your kids, Children’s Services will take your children away from you and place them with your husband, since he has housing and electricity and an income”. That was completely intolerable to me, so I chose to go back to his place instead. I couldn’t find a way to leave and get out on my own without losing custody of my children and without going hungry.
My husband, also, loved to create fear and terror in me to keep me on a very short leash. As with many women in bad relationships, he threatened to kill me time and time again. He would go into detail about just how he was going to kill me and dispose of my body where “no one would ever find it”. Things were so bad, however, death would have been a relief to me. I didn’t care anymore if he killed me. In my opinion, killing me would be doing me a favor. However, if he killed me, then my kids would grow up without a mother, and worse yet, they would grow up with him hitting them their entire lives. I couldn’t handle the thought of my children growing up getting beaten like I did when I was a child. I needed to protect them, so his threats of killing me became a real concern. At one point, I had a restraining order on him, but it was a meaningless piece of paper to him, and he got arrested for violating it less than 12 hours after it was created. When someone wants to kill you bad enough, no piece of paper is going to stop them - believe me. That restraining order didn’t give me any peace of mind whatsoever. And it certainly meant nothing to him. He always believed he was above any laws and that laws just didn’t apply to him.
- Other Signs of a Bad Relationship
Women have a lot of rationalizations that somehow make domestic violence “acceptable”. In the beginning, the physical violence in my relationship involved little slaps, a kick here and there, a pinch, etc. My rationalization at the time was that “Well, he didn’t punch me or beat me severely, so maybe I’m just imagining that there’s a problem here”. There was a question of degree or severity. How much physical abuse does it take to classify it as abuse? When he just slaps or kicks or pinches you, is that abuse? Should you leave then or just say “Oh, it wasn’t so bad” and forget about it? At the time, I chose the latter response. WRONG DECISION!
Having endured years of my relationship with him and seeing friends enduring the same kind of situation, I know truly believe that any physical abuse is a huge red flag to get out of that relationship right then. First of all, it always escalates. It may not escalate right away - maybe it’ll take years, even - but it will always escalate to more severe abuse at some point. Believe me, at some point, it will get worse. And in some cases, it gets deadly. If you are in a relationship where you get hit, and you want to think, “Well, that wasn’t so bad”, STOP! Pack your things and get out now. Even “just a little” hitting is not okay!
Physical abuse is not the only kind of abuse, however, and bad relationships can involve other types of intolerable issues. There are partners who are extremely jealous or controlling or emotionally or sexually abusive. If you are in a relationship and you have that gut feeling that says, “This is not acceptable, and I (or my children) deserve better than this”, then you need to listen to that inner voice and get out.
We only have a limited time on this earth, and for me, I regret spending all those years living in misery and fear. Those are years that I will never get back. I could have spent that time improving myself, helping others, changing the world for the better in some way. Instead, I spent all that time just fighting to survive and hang on to my sanity.
More importantly, however, is the situation that I exposed my children to. Children are like sponges, and their experiences - what they see and feel - create the people they will become in just a few short years. By staying in that relationship, my children experienced fear like no child should ever have to experience. They felt like they had no control, which was teaching them to just “accept things in life”, because there’s nothing you can do about it. That was not the lesson I wanted my kids to learn. I want them to know that they are good, and if they try hard, they can accomplish anything they want in life, and that they have control over their own lives. By staying in that situation, I taught them the opposite.
They shed so many tears that should have never been shed. They saw their mother get hit over and over again, and they got so angry. The fact is that my children deserved so much better. I should have left a lot sooner.
If you’re in a bad relationship and you have children, don’t wait any longer. Think about the kids first. Do it for them. Get out today. The longest journey begins with a single step. Just take it one step at a time. After the first small step, then start to think about the next step. If you think about all the things that you need to do to get out, it can be overwhelming and you just want to give up and say, “I can’t”. But if you focus on one tiny step - and only that step - you can do it. Think about the next step when you get to it.
There are a lot of other reasons why we stay in bad relationships, but those were the major ones for me. It seems so easy for others looking in from the outside to see the situation and think, “Just leave! What’s so difficult about that?” But the reality, behind closed doors, is certainly not that easy. But having traveled the road I’ve traveled, I want to gently take each and every person out there who is still stuck in a bad relationship and say “You can do it! You need to leave NOW. You are worth more than this. As much as you think you love him, as much as you believe he’ll change or that things will get better, you need to realize that it rarely happens that way. It almost always gets worse over time, and they hardly ever change, even though they try so hard to make you believe that they will. Even though it’s scary and difficult and you have no money and nowhere to go, GO ANYWAY. You’ll find a way. Don’t stop trying until you get what you deserve - a fresh start, a safe place to be, and a place where you can be treated with the respect and love that you deserve. It may be the most difficult thing you’ll ever do in this life, but GO and go now!”
If I had left sooner, my kids would be with their mother right now. Instead, they are being held hostage in a bad place with a bad man, and they are getting hit every day of their lives. And there is no mother for them to hug or talk to or tell them that they are precious and special.
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